EOTO - Social Media

The popular app icon for the app Instagram on a smart phone.

How Social Media Changed Communication

Think about how many times you have already checked social media today. Maybe you opened Snapchat when you woke up, scrolled through TikTok while getting ready, or checked Instagram without even realizing you were doing it. Social media is so normal in our lives that we rarely stop to think about how new it actually is.

What surprised me most when looking into the history of social media was that there isn't really one person who "invented" it. Instead, social media developed over time as different platforms found new ways to connect people through the internet.

So Where Did It Start?

One of the earliest recognizable social networking sites was SixDegrees, which launched in 1997. The platform allowed people to create profiles, connect with friends, and see their network of connections.

That sounds extremely simple compared to what we have today, but the idea was pretty groundbreaking. The internet was no longer only somewhere you went to find information. It could also become a place where you interacted with other people.

From there, social media took off. Friendster and MySpace expanded online profiles and friendships. Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube followed in 2005, and Twitter arrived in 2006. Eventually, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok introduced even more visual and immediate ways of communicating.

And people adopted social media fast. In 2005 only 7% of Americans used social media, by 2015 it was about 65%.

To me, this is where social media really changed communication.

Before social media, the average person couldn't easily send a message to thousands of people. Mass communication was largely controlled by newspapers, television stations, radio, and other established organizations.

Social media changed that.

Now, anyone with a phone can potentially become a publisher. We can share photographs, videos, opinions, news, and personal experiences instantly. Businesses can communicate directly with consumers, creators can build careers entirely online, and people can find communities across the world. Social media didn't just make communication faster. It changed who gets to participate in mass communication.

Social Media greatly effects mental health.

Of course, giving millions of people the ability to instantly share information has consequences.

One of the biggest is misinformation. MIT researchers studying information shared on Twitter found that false information spread farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than truthful information in their dataset.

There are also concerns about mental health. The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that we still cannot conclude social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents and has called for greater attention to both its potential benefits and harms.

Then there are questions about privacy, data collection, cyberbullying, unrealistic expectations, and how much of our personal lives we should actually put online.

Social media began with a pretty simple goal: connecting people through the internet.

Less than 30 years later, that idea has become something much bigger. Social media affects how we communicate, shop, learn, get news, advocate for causes, and understand other people.

Maybe the most important part of its invention isn't a specific app at all. It's the fact that social media changed the relationship between people and mass communication.

We aren't just the audience anymore.

We're also the ones creating it.

AI DISCLAIMER: AI was used in the design and creation of this post. It helped me gather sources and create a blog like structure to effectively communicate the information.